Wonder if anyone could shed some light on this messaging construct:
The documentation says that messages appear btwn brackets [] and
that the msg target/object is on the left, whilst the msg itself ...

Here's a question that's always bugged me. I'm going to use java as an example because I've almost never run into a problem in java where I didn't need to use helper methods in its class structure.
...

I'm heading a new team of developers working on a software project that makes use of continuous integration (circleci) w/ a pretty fleshed out suite of busterjs unit/integration/acceptance tests. Our ...

I'm a python beginner, and I just learned a technique involving dictionaries and functions. The syntax is easy and it seems like a trivial thing, but my python senses are tingling. Something tells me ...

In http://www.json.org Douglas Crockford shows the specs of the JSON format in two interesting ways:
In the right side column he lists a text spec that looks like a YACC or LEX listing.
In the main ...

I'm interested in functional programming and decided to get head to head with Haskell. My head hurts... but I'll eventually get it...
I have one curiosity though, why is the syntax so cryptic (in lack ...

I work in c++ mostly as a hobby (I'm still in school and therefor don't have a real job). The IDEs generate the makefile for me and so I'm wondering if it's worth learning how to make them myself. By ...

I've been spending this week teaching kids (11-18) to program. Teaching them the core concepts and the logic has been going fine, but I've noticed one snagging point for them all: syntax.
I feel like ...

I've been learning Python for about 2 months now (Started with Learn Python The Hard Way, now reading Dive Into Python), and within both books, I still seem to be confused over this one bit of code.
...

I'm working on a new programming language, which determines structure with indentation instead of braces in the manner of Python and CoffeeScript. Obviously placing lines indented with spaces next to ...

I am currently learning Javascript, and there is one element of the syntax that I can just not seem to nail down. That element is adding semicolons at the end of each line. I have learned Python and ...

CoffeeScript is a language with a very clean Ruby-like syntax that transcompiles to JavaScript. Does the same thing exists with C? Then writing more readable and as fast as original C programs would ...

Is there a reason that a semi-colon was chosen as a line terminator instead of a different symbol?
I want to know the history behind this decision, and hope the answers will lead to insights that may ...

In C, C++ and some dialects of BASIC, goto labels are declared with the syntax label:. I'm working on a language that uses name: type as the syntax for variable declarations, so I'd prefer if possible ...

I'm designing a programming language which has three kinds of quoted entities: strings and characters as in C, and symbols (interned strings intended for use as lookup keys and such) which I consider ...

Is there a programming language in which you can set your own syntax configurations and it would convert the code to a language you choose?
For instance, you would choose specific configurations like ...

This is something that bothered me a lot at school.
5 years ago, when I learned SQL, I always wondered why we specify first the fields we want and then where we want them from.
According to my idea, ...

I understand that all PHP variables need to be preceded by a dollar sign (e.g. $someValue = 1), but why is this the case? Why was this design choice made?
The reason I ask is my girlfriend asked why ...

I want to know the rules of naming (AlwaysCapitalize, _underscore, firstSmallLetter, etc...) for each of Namespaces, Classes, Interfaces, Exceptions, Data Members, Methods, Variables, etc....
also I ...

I was reading Ben Cherry's "JavaScript Module Pattern: In-Depth", and he had some example code that I didn't quite understand. Under the Cross-File Private State heading, there is some example code ...

I posted this question on stackoverflow and it got a poor reception. In reality, the problems I'm facing are minor and any workaround can be considered impractical. However, I believe it might be of ...